The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Business Insider’s Henry Blodget Defends Linkbait, Slideshows, And Aggregation
- reCaptcha Founder’s Language Learning Site Duolingo To Open To The Public On June 19
- After Last Year’s Debacle, Airbnb Ups User Protection With $1M Host Guarantee
- Sequoia’s Roelof Botha: “Entrepreneurs Don’t Appreciate When They’re Onto A Good Thing”
- Kleiner Perkins Sued By Partner Ellen Pao For Alleged Sexual Harassment, Gender Discrimination
- Re-live 1993 With ThinkGeek’s New Super Famicom-Inspired Wii Controller
- Quikr, India’s Spin On Craigslist, Gobbles Up $32M From Warburg Pincus, eBay & More
- With A 50% Increase In Applications, The Next Y Combinator Class Will Be 80 Strong
- Betaworks’ John Borthwick: VC Scene in NYC is “Pretty Busy” Right Now, But Not “Overheated” Like San Francisco
- Now On Your iPhone, ReadyForZero Is Ready To Save You From Debt
- Andreessen Horowitz’s Jeff Jordan: Are Companies Building On Top Of Facebook Really Growing Or Just “Spam?”
- Elon Musk Competing With Zuck For Best Week Ever: Announces Tesla Milestone, Launches Rocket To ISS
- Incident’s gTar Tops $120,000 On Kickstarter (That’s $110K In Less Than 24 Hours)
- Google Closes Acquisition Of Motorola: Woodside To Lead; Page Pushes Mobile Aspect
- PayLeap Attempts To Woo Startups With New Payment Referral Kickback
- Amazon Appstore For Android Now Lets Users Test Drive Apps Right On Their Devices
- Larry Page Spotted Wearing Google Glasses In England!
- Sonos Launches The Sonos Sub (Woofer, Not Sandwich)
- ooVoo Rolls Out Video Chat Apps For iPad And Facebook
- TechCrunch Disrupt NYC LIVE: Day Two! #TCDisrupt
| Business Insider’s Henry Blodget Defends Linkbait, Slideshows, And Aggregation Posted: 22 May 2012 09:16 AM PDT  If you are so inclined, it’s pretty easy to criticize Business Insider — the all caps headlines, the slideshows, and content that has been “aggregated” from other sites. (And yes, BI has some mean things to say about us too.) But in the course of of the Disrupt panel on new media, BI CEO and editor in chief Henry Blodget offered several unapologetic explanations of why he and his writers do what they do. One idea that Blodget returned to a couple of times during the panel was that of “native storytelling forms.” In other words, he said that whenever a new medium emerges, traditional media companies are always treating it as extension of what they’re already doing, leading to a lot of “square pegs and round holes.” BI, on the other hand, is trying to explore and build a business around a “new form of storytelling.” Are phrases like “native storytelling form” just a fancy way for Blodget to say “slideshow”? To a certain extent, yes. For example, when moderator Alexia Tsotsis asked why Blodget published his profile of Mark Zuckerberg in New York magazine rather than his own site, Blodget said that he could have run it on BI, “but frankly, that’s not ideal for this medium.” As a counterexample of what does work online, Blodget pointed to a slideshow of the Canadian oil sand mines, which he said showed the “unbelievable power of photo essays.” At the end of the panel, Blodget addressed the criticism even more directly, when he thought Alexia was taking veiled potshots slideshows (something she denied, especially since she produced slideshows in her old job as SF Weekly web editor). He said slideshows are exactly the kind of “native storytelling” that he was referring to — something you couldn’t do in TV or in print. He pointed out that BI slideshows also have a “view as one page” option, so they don’t force people to click through each slide if they don’t want to. Blodget also discussed the idea that Business Insider publishes sensationalist “linkbait” headlines. “You know what the definition of ‘linkbait’ is?” he said. “It’s a story that people want to link to and share.” So Blodget has no problem publishing sad puppy photos next to Facebook IPO stories, because that’s what people want to see. He said that’s distinct from “clickbait” headlines, which may promise one thing while the story delivers something else. He became most excited when he moved to the topic of news aggregation. BI has been accused of aggregating stories from other sites without proper attribution, but Blodget said, “Please, please aggregate from Business Insider all day long. We will only thank you.” After all, he said this kind of citation is “what magazines used to have to employ PR people to do.” To be clear, there were other speakers on the panel — I’ve focused on Blodget since he spoke the most and was the most provocative. There were other approaches discussed on-stage. For example, as a counterpoint to all the discussion of traffic from social networks, Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera said a lot of his content doesn’t do well on social media. After all, he’s trying to reach the movers and shakers in tech who want their “news vegetables” along with “news desserts.” “A lot of stuff that you read on Techmeme and are happy for having read is stuff that you know wouldn’t make your Facebook feed fun,” Rivera said. (Though he was quick to add that Techmeme has fun stuff too.) There was lots more in the panel, but here’s the real conclusion, to quote my colleague Ingrid Lunden: “We need more puppies on the homepage of TechCrunch.” Ingrid, ask and ye shall receive.
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| reCaptcha Founder’s Language Learning Site Duolingo To Open To The Public On June 19 Posted: 22 May 2012 09:15 AM PDT  At TechCrunch Disrupt New York this morning, Luis von Ahn, the founder of the ambitious free language learning and text translation site Duolingo, announced that the site will come out of private beta on June 19. Duolingo was founded by reCaptcha founder Luis von Ahn in 2011. The site opened its private beta in late 2011 and currently focuses on teaching its users English, Spanish and German. Von Ahn, of course, is well-known for his work on reCaptcha, which Google acquired in 2009. As von Ahn noted today as Disrupt, more than 200 million captchas are now typed in every day. This insight led to the development of reCaptcha, which doesn’t just help developers distinguish between bots and humans, but also helps to augment optical character recognition. About 10 percent of the world’s population have now helped recognize at least one word. Now, with Duolingo, the team is pushing this idea forward. As von Ahn noted, virtually all major projects before the Internet were done with less than 10,000 people. Now, thanks to the Internet, a project that involved 100 million people become a possibility and with Duolingo, the idea is to get all of these people to help translate the web for free. The obstacles here, said von Ahn, are that there is a lack of bilinguals and that it would be hard to motivate these people to spend their time translating the web. The language learning market, of course, is huge and millions of people pay for it. With Duolingo, users start to translate easy words and then move to complex sentences. Duolingo says its users learn about as well as those who use Rosetta Stone, and that its translations are about as good as those from professional translators (thanks also, of course, to the fact that it can compare multiple translations from multiple learners).
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| After Last Year’s Debacle, Airbnb Ups User Protection With $1M Host Guarantee Posted: 22 May 2012 09:01 AM PDT  As people become increasingly comfortable using web platforms to swap homes, cars, and everything in between, some have said that collaborative consumption movement has the potential to be as profound as the industrial revolution. But, before that can happen, platforms that deal in collaborative consumption have to do more to ensure consumer protection, a lesson Airbnb learned the hard way last year. After a user’s home was trashed last summer (and a slew of bad press followed), Airbnb apologized and offered a $50,000 guarantee against damages to hosts. Today, the community marketplace is going one giant step further, announcing that it will now be offering its hosts a $1 million guarantee. Partnering with insurance giant Lloyd’s of London, Airbnb’s new insurance policy now covers up to $1 million in property damage that results from an Airbnb booking. As it would seem, this is a fairly unprecedented move for the industry, and a very important one given how Airbnb acts as the mediator between two parties moving their online relationships into the real world. Nothing is more imperative than the trust of that relationship, and Airbnb’s move to renew its commitment to expanding its safeguards goes a long way towards securing that dynamic. Check out the new guarantee here.
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| Sequoia’s Roelof Botha: “Entrepreneurs Don’t Appreciate When They’re Onto A Good Thing” Posted: 22 May 2012 08:56 AM PDT  TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington sat down with Sequoia Capital partner Roelof Botha in another fireside chat at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 this morning. Prior to joining Sequoia Capital in 2003, Botha served as the Chief Financial Officer of PayPal during its sale to eBay, and today considers himself a champion of consumer web plays. He also sits on the board of hot startups like Eventbrite, Square, TokBox, Tumblr, and Jawbone, to name a few. And he’s an investor in other startups like Unity Technologies, a company helping developers build 3D games, as well as the interesting (and sci-fi-ish) Gene Security Network, which Botha describes as helping parents have healthy babies via in vitro fertilization. Of course, Arrington then asked how close we were to being able to design our own babies, and Botha, taking the question seriously, answered that it was “feasible to some extent today,” but that there’s “just an ethics question.” (Oh you think?) But the more interesting parts of the interview involved Botha’s vision for entrepreneurs building companies today, and his concerns that not enough are focused on the long road ahead. Arrington asked Botha to expand on several earlier statements he’s made, where he encouraged tech founders not to sell too early. Botha had said that “people need to be more greedy, and more patient,” for example, and noted that Sequoia “loved being in business with entrepreneurs that want to build something enduring.” He openly pondered what the tech ecosystem would be like if companies like Facebook, Apple and Microsoft had sold out early, too. Arrington also asked him to list other companies that had sold too early. Botha did say he would always wonder about what would have happened with YouTube had Google not acquired them. “Google has done a fantastic job,” said Botha, who also interestingly noted that YouTube was now profitable. “Entrepreneurs don’t appreciate when they’re onto a good thing,” said Botha, “the long run can be speculator,” he said. Companies can even see 10x returns after going public, he added, saying that it took LinkedIn eight years to build its business to the scale it is today. Taking a note from Steve Jobs, Botha then encouraged entrepreneurs to build something that “makes a dent in the universe.” One of the more controversial portions of the chat involved Botha’s discussion of Sequoia’s scout program which PandoDaily recently uncovered. Botha said that the spirit behind the program, which he described as “stealth” but not “secret,” was to give entrepreneurs the chance to make angel investments of their own before they’ve achieved liquidity. Sequoia even had internal discussions about whether or not to make a public announcement about the program, he said. The firm has “a small amount” of money invested in this program and dozens of scouts, but Botha took issue with claims that entrepreneurs didn’t know where the money was coming from. “We always wire the money,” he says, indicating that it would be hard for a startup founder to not know that Sequoia was behind the investments.
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| Kleiner Perkins Sued By Partner Ellen Pao For Alleged Sexual Harassment, Gender Discrimination Posted: 22 May 2012 08:30 AM PDT  Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, one of the most storied and well-respected venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, has been sued by Ellen Pao, an investment partner with the firm. In the complaint filed May 10 in San Francisco Superior Court (which is embedded below in its entirety), Pao claims that she was the victim of sexual harassment by Ajit Nazre, a former Kleiner Perkins investment partner who departed the firm late last year. She also alleges that she, along with other female employees at the firm, were regularly left out of meetings held by the firm’s male partners and that she was unfairly passed over for promotions because of her gender and her response to Nazre’s advances. High profile Kleiner Perkins partners John Doerr, Ray Lane, Bing Gordon, Ted Schlein, Chi-Hua Chien, are among those named in the suit. Pao is requesting economic damages including her allegedly lost back pay and punitive damages as allowed by law, among other reliefs. She is being represented by Rudy, Exelrod, Zieff & Lowe, LLP. When reached for comment by TechCrunch, Kleiner Perkins provided the following response:
This is breaking news, and we are updating this story as it develops. Here is Pao’s complaint in its entirety:
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| Re-live 1993 With ThinkGeek’s New Super Famicom-Inspired Wii Controller Posted: 22 May 2012 08:17 AM PDT  A Wiimote turned on its side makes for a perfectly serviceable controller when plowing through retro games from the Wii Shop Channel, and the Classic Controller isn’t bad either, but I wouldn’t call either of them an ideal solution. On the other hand, ThinkGeek’s new Super Famicom controller for the Wii manages to come pretty damned close, especially if you’re a gamer who spends your time steeped in the past. Thankfully, unlike the controller this thing was modeled on, there’s no need to plug it directly into the Wii. Instead, the $20 add-on plugs into the bottom of a Wiimote so it’s simple enough lean back in a beanbag across the room and blow through some Actraiser. It probably goes without saying that not everyone will appreciate this thing’s sheer lack of ergonomics, but remember — the original Super Famicom/Nintendo controller was crafted back in the early 90s, and still manages to put its boxy predecessor to shame. Nevertheless, you had best look elsewhere if you’re looking to play some more recent games, as using a D-Pad to control movement in three dimensions rarely ends well. My only regret? That ThinkGeek doesn’t have a version emblazoned with the purple and lavender hues of the Super Nintendo. Now that Nintendo fanatics have another bit of hardware to add to their collections, maybe ThinkGeek will finally get around to building that NES-esque Bluetooth mobile gaming controller they promised us earlier this year.
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| Quikr, India’s Spin On Craigslist, Gobbles Up $32M From Warburg Pincus, eBay & More Posted: 22 May 2012 08:05 AM PDT  Quikr, India’s largest online and mobile classifieds portal, announced today that it has raised $32 million in series E financing, led by New York City-based private equity giant Warburg Pincus. The company’s existing investors, which include Matrix Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and eBay, also participated in the funding. The investment is Quikr’s fifth and largest financing to date, following an $8 million raise in May 2011, led by Nokia Growth Partners, Norwest and eBay. The latest capital infusion brings Quikr’s total funding to $46 million. Quikr was known as Kijiji (of www.kijiji.in) until a re-branding in 2008, when the company decided it wanted to adopt a name that more readily reflected ease of use and speed, with a slightly more universal (and vowel-less Web 2.0) feel. Apparently “Kijiji” didn’t inspire that. No idea why. Kidding aside, the company was set squarely on the long-term goal of becoming a fast, easy-to-use consumer-focused platform for the Indian community, and in turn providing it with a resource by which to buy, sell and rent in any category. And, since its launch in 2008 (and its re-branding shortly thereafter), the Mumbai-based startup has grown into a sizable platform, which is now used by some 17 million people and businesses each month — across more than 83 cities — and offers listings on everything from real estate to electronics. Today, more than 50 percent of the Indian population is under the age of 25, which equates to an enormous number of savvy web and mobile adopters. As a result, many see huge opportunity in Indian eCommerce, especially that which is targeted at a younger audience. Unsurprisingly, Silicon Valley investors have been paying more and more attention to the startup ecosystem in India, the growing web penetration, and adoption of mobile devices. What’s more, as demonstrated by this sizable investment in Quikr, not to mention the $40 million round that Bessemer, Nexus and others sank into fast-growing Indian eCommerce and deals company, Snapdeals, American investors aren’t afraid to send their money abroad. For more, check out Quikr at home here.
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| With A 50% Increase In Applications, The Next Y Combinator Class Will Be 80 Strong Posted: 22 May 2012 08:01 AM PDT  At TechCrunch Disrupt on Tuesday, Y Combinator’s Harjeet Taggar said that the incubator’s next class will have at least 80 startups, up from 65 in the prior group. Even though Y Combinator is hosting its largest class ever, it was also the most selective class the incubator has ever had, with just a 2 percent acceptance rate. While Y Combinator grew its class size by about 20 percent, the number of applications increased 50 percent. During the evaluation process, Y Combinator conducted about 285 interviews over three rounds of interview tracts. At the same time that Y Combinator is growing its class size, the amount of money its companies have access to continues to grow. Taggar said that the majority — about 75 percent — raised convertible debt, and the average cap was around $10 million in the last class. That compares to $8 million in the prior group, and “probably $6 million” in the class before that. Several weeks ago, Kim-Mai Cutler — who interviewed Taggar during the session — asked the question, “How Does Y Combinator Scale Y Combinator?” So how does it do that? According to Taggar, one of the main scaling issues that Y Combinator has faced is just around spending time with the startups that join. When he joined back in 2010, office hours were mainly done by Paul Graham. One way that Y Combinator has adjusted is simply by adding other partners to provide office hours. Another change is the addition of group office hours. Not only has that meant that Y Combinator can reach more startups, but according to Taggar, it also has created serendipitous connections between participating companies. That way, the companies can actually help each other, rather than just relying on mentors and YC partners.
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| Posted: 22 May 2012 07:53 AM PDT  Betaworks‘ CEO John Borthwick took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York with Crunchfund’s MG Siegler this morning to discuss Betaworks’ investments and the state of the investment business in San Francisco and New York in general. Betaworks, the New York-based company behind popular services like bitly, Chartbeat and SocialFlow has also made a number of investments in other startups, including Tumblr, Kickstarter and the recent Zynga acquisition OMGPOP. As for the difference between the state of the venture capital scene in New York and San Francisco, Borthwick noted that he thinks things are pretty busy in New York right now, but that the market is not overheated in the same way the San Francisco market is at the moment. While the easy availability of capital drove a lot of lazy entrepreneurship in the tech bubble of the late 1990s, he noted that he is not quite seeing this yet. “We still have so much stuff to build,” Borthwick said, so he doesn’t think the innovation curve the recent crop of good startups is building upon will flatten out anytime soon. “We are just at the beginning of this,” he said. In terms of humanizing digital experiences, he noted, a lot still remains to be done. He did, however, wonder if the Facebook IPO won’t take at least some of the air out of the startup scene on the West Coast. Talking about the difference between the East Coast and West Coast, Borthwick argued that the two scenes are probably quite complementary in the end, especially thanks to the media focus in the New York scene and the different skill sets on both coasts. The line between technology and media, though, he said, “is becoming gray.” Asked about Fictive Kin, the Brooklyn-based design collective that is one of Betaworks’ latest investments, Borthwick noted that this is a pretty novel concept for Betaworks and different from its other investments. Over the next two years, Betaworks will essentially get the right of first refusal for all products that come out of Fictive Kin. Borthwick described this deal as a way to expand the Betaworks brand. Our own Kim-Mai Cutler took a closer look at this deal last week. The discussion also touched upon Betaworks’ investment in OMGPOP, which was recently acquired by Zynga. The story of OMGPOP and how it really wasn’t doing so well before it hit upon Draw Something is relatively well known and as Borthwick noted, “prior the launch of Draw Something, the company wasn’t going anywhere fast.” One thing that’s happening now, though, he noted, is that the infrastructure is in place to have these things take off very fast.”
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| Now On Your iPhone, ReadyForZero Is Ready To Save You From Debt Posted: 22 May 2012 07:30 AM PDT  YC alum ReadyForZero, an online financial service that’s trying to get people out of debt faster, is today expanding to mobile with the launch of its first mobile app. For now, the experience is designed mainly to give you at-a-glance insight into your current debt situation. However, the mobile app also uses iOS push notifications to alert you to large purchases and payments which could impact your financial goals. Says ReadyForZero CEO and co-founder Rod Ebrahimi, this feature is designed to “keep you honest,” similar to the free ReadyForZero credit card stickers, which shame you into putting your card back into your wallet. As with the stickers, ReadyForZero’s push notifications are like nagging reminders when you’re not staying on course. But while the stickers are like a simpler solution than having to put your credit card in ice (yep, this is a thing), the app’s push notifications aren’t just about keeping you from being naughty – they also alert you when you complete financial goals, make payments, or the interest rate changes. For those unfamiliar with the service, ReadyForZero automatically imports data from your bank accounts, credit card accounts and loans, then uses this information to actively make recommendations as to when you're able to make extra payments in order to save on interest. It can also alert you to the repercussions that recent big-ticket purchases will have on your plans to pay down your debt within a given timeframe, and can suggest ways you can get back on track. The mobile app, like the desktop-size website, lets you track your progress, payments and view all your accounts (loans, credit cards, etc.). Ebrahimi says that he knew now was the right time to go mobile because of the huge problem with student loan debt in particular. “Earlier this year, total outstanding student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion, overtaking total outstanding credit card debt,” he says. And on July 1st, the federal student loan rate is scheduled to double from 3.4% to 6.8%, he adds, depending on the results of this vote. In other words, it’s a good time to expand the ReadyForZero service to other platforms – especially one favored by students (their phones). The iOS app is going live now in iTunes. And yes, Android version is in the works.
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| Posted: 22 May 2012 07:23 AM PDT  This morning at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, TechCrunch editor Eric Eldon sat down for a fireside chat with Jeff Jordan, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz and former CEO of OpenTable, to discuss his investment perspectives. Jordan, who took OpenTable public in 2009, shared his thoughts on the current investment landscape, including the situation with companies like Groupon, Fab, Pinterest, and others. Although many topics were on the table for this morning’s chat (check out the video), one of the more interesting things Jordan discussed was how companies were leveraging Facebook integration today to achieve growth. Eldon started off the chat by asking Jordan about what it was like back when he was taking OpenTable public, and Jordan reminisced about how it had become fashionable to not take your company public. Today, that’s not necessarily the case. Getting right into the companies that Jordan likes, Eldon noted that Jordan’s bullish on Groupon. Why is that?, asked Eldon. Jordan said that Groupon’s growth is “really stunning,” having scaled up to hundreds of thousands of merchants in just a few years. He also said the pace with which they grew was “amazing.” However, he noted that Groupon might have gone public prematurely. Still, he’s very bullish on Groupon in the long term, saying despite there being no barrier to entry to Groupon’s business, they have a high merchant renewal rate, and it’s essentially come down to a two-company race between it and LivingSocial. Another insight that jumped out from the chat — and probably the most notable one for new startups building apps in today’s ecosystem — was the current situation with building on top of Facebook. Jordan noted that Facebook integration had been helpful to startups like Pinterest and Fab, of course. But there is now a challenge in evaluating companies’ growth, because it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell if a company is experiencing real growth, or whether it’s “the result of spam,” he said. (“Instagram for video” startups, take note!) As for what Andreessen Horowitz looks for in the companies they invest in, Jordan didn’t really give away much of the firm’s secret sauce, saying that they’re looking to find one of the 15 companies that create all the value in venture investments every year. He cited Pinterest here especially as one of those that worked really hard to achieve product and market fit. Finally, Eldon asked about how Andreessen Horowitz’s partners had pledged to donate half their income to charity. Some are saying that’s just a PR stunt, said Eldon. That would be a “damned expensive PR stunt,” laughed Jordan. All of the partners are passionate about charity, he said, and he would be “ecstatic” if others follow their lead.
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| Elon Musk Competing With Zuck For Best Week Ever: Announces Tesla Milestone, Launches Rocket To ISS Posted: 22 May 2012 07:13 AM PDT  Last week Mark Zuckerberg took his little Harvard project public in the largest tech IPO ever and quickly followed it up by marrying his Harvard sweetheart. However, the honeymoon was cut short as the Facebook stock has yet to impress. Meanwhile, the tech world’s equivalent of Tony Stark, announced via Twitter yesterday that the Tesla cars were approved for sale to the public after passing the necessary federal crash tests. That announcement was followed up this morning with SpaceX becoming the first privately owned company to launch a rocket destined to dock with the International Space Station. So then the question becomes whether or not launching a rocket combined with a major milestone in a separate company outshines taking Facebook public. In my book, rockets and fast cars win every time. Musk’s car company is on a tear lately. Tesla announced in early May that it was on-track to deliver the Model S to customers next month, a full month prior to the original July rollout (June 22nd according to today’s press release). Then, a few days later, Tesla revealed that it will begin repaying the $465 million by the end of the year which would make the auto company the first startup to begin repayment. SpaceX, one of Musk’s other ventures, had an impressive milestone of its own today, becoming the first privately-owned space company to launch a rocket headed for the ISS. History will no doubt forget that this event happened a few days late. The rocket was supposed to launch on Sunday, May 19th but the launch was aborted with a half a second left on the countdown clock. The rocket’s automated systems flagged abnormal pressure in one of the engines and automatically killed the launch, which would have likely caused a catastrophe.
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| Incident’s gTar Tops $120,000 On Kickstarter (That’s $110K In Less Than 24 Hours) Posted: 22 May 2012 06:32 AM PDT  Kickstarter is a great place to launch a product. Remember the Pebble smart watch, which saw over $1 million in funding in its first 28 hours on the site, and surpassing $3 million well over a month before their stated goal? Disrupt, which just so happens to be underway as I type these very words, is also an excellent place to launch your product. We’ve seen countless companies rise to almost instantaneous success after stepping off of our stage, like Soluto, Mint.com, Redbeacon, and GroupMe. So it should be no surprise that Incident’s now-famous gTar, which was launched both on the Disrupt Battlefield stage and on Kickstarter, has made upwards of $120,000 on Kickstarter since launching on our stage yesterday. Idon Beck, Josh Stansfield, and Franco Cedano had only tallied $10,000 before their impressive Disrupt debut. Of course, Disrupt can’t take all the credit. TechCrunch’s sister site Engadget went hands-on with the gTar around 3:30pm yesterday, which could have only pushed more traffic to their company’s Kickstarter page. I actually went hands-on myself and, as a huge Guitar Hero fan, I can safely say that the gTar takes amateur wanna-be guitar-playing to an entirely new level. I felt like I could actually, eventually of course, learn to play guitar for real, and that I wouldn’t want to slam my head into a table trying. Progress. The estimated retail price for the gTar will be $450, but investors who back the product on Kickstarter will be able to get their own gTar for a discounted $350.
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| Google Closes Acquisition Of Motorola: Woodside To Lead; Page Pushes Mobile Aspect Posted: 22 May 2012 06:32 AM PDT  As we reported would happen yesterday, Google has today announced that it has closed its acquisition of Motorola Mobility, buying the Illinois-based device maker for $40 per share in cash for a total of $12.5 billion. As widely expected, Sanjay Jha is stepping down as CEO and Dennis Woodside, Google’s former Americas head, will take the helm at Motorola Mobility, which will be operated as a standalone company. The company says the acquisition will help Google “supercharge” the Android ecosystem: while Motorola will be making devices using the platform, it will also remain open. Page, interestingly, uses his blog post announcing the deal to focus mainly on the mobile aspects of the acquisition — Motorola also has a substantial business as a media hardware vendor, making things like set-top boxes and other equipment and technology to deliver digital video services. “The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live,” he writes, emphasizing what the future might hold for mobile technology and likening it to Star Trek made real (and those Google Glasses really do look very Star Trek). “It's a great time to be in the mobile business…I'm confident Dennis [Woodhouse] and the team at Motorola will be creating the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come,” Page writes. In announcing the acquisition, Page describes Woodhouse as “phenomenal” at team-building, and notes under him, U.S. revenues went up to $17.5 billion from $10.8 billion in less than three years. “Dennis has always been a committed partner to our customers and I know he will be an outstanding leader of Motorola,” he wrote. Now come more questions: what Motorola assets will Google hold on to, and what will it cut off in the new-look Motorola Mobility — and what will that say about Google’s bigger strategy as an integrated tech player? And will employees go in the process, as we have heard they will?
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| PayLeap Attempts To Woo Startups With New Payment Referral Kickback Posted: 22 May 2012 06:27 AM PDT  If you are in the business of needing to process shopping for your ecommerce startup then this is going to be of interest. If not, look away now. Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York the startup PayLeap, which is a payment platform for ecommerce, is reaching out with a new program to help fund the development of applications connecting to their payment gateway platform. Whether it’s marketing spiel or not, PayLeap claims to have “set aside” $1 million in funding to cover developers upfront, as well as a residual stream back from referred businesses that have active payments with the company. Here’s how it works: A lot of web and app developers refer their customers to some of the larger payment gateway companies, but they don’t get anything back for doing so. PayLeap program (P4) plans to collects these ongoing residuals through a referral relationship. That means the merchant, the partner, and of course PayLeap benefits. PayLeap is going up against Authorize.net and Auth.net (a legacy gateway that's been around a long time). The problem is the developers don’t get anything back for those referrals. PayPal, Google Checkout, Stripe and Square are also competitive but often involve additional fees. P4 is supposed to help offset the development costs associated with certifying through PayLeap’s APIs and help cover co-marketing and promotional costs. This could be useful for startups which need to handle electronic payments like credit, debit, check/ACH, gift card, and EBT because its connected to global payment processing platforms including First Data, TSYS and Paymentech. Of course, it’s not just commerce, but could apply to mobile, healthcare, bill presentment, inventory management systems, and pretty much anywhere electronic payments are needed, according to Rod Katzfey, COO. As they say, you pays your money and you takes your choice…
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| Amazon Appstore For Android Now Lets Users Test Drive Apps Right On Their Devices Posted: 22 May 2012 06:23 AM PDT  Unless an app you have your eye happens to have a free demo version to muck about with, there’s little one can do to try out an Android app on a device in advance. Sure, you could buy the app straight from the Google Play Store and get a refund within 15 minutes if you’re not satisfied, but Amazon has a new solution in place that helps take the friction out of that testing process. The latest update for the Amazon Appstore Android app packs a welcome surprise — instead of being stuck Test Driving your apps on your PC, you’ll now be able to do it from directly within the app. Well, some of you will be able to do it. Not every Android phone will be able to take part in the Test Drive program quite yet, as Amazon points out that the service is only set up to work with certain devices for now. My Galaxy Nexus doesn’t seem to be on the list at the moment, and Engadget reports that the immensely popular Galaxy S II is similarly shut out of the fun. Still, it seems to be quite a treat for the devices that do work (Amazon doesn’t have a list of supported hardware just yet). Once you’ve got the updated app in place, you’ll see a nice big Test Drive button under the images on an app’s landing page. The new feature leans heavily on Amazon’s massive EC2 backend — once the Test Drive button is pressed, an instance of the app starts running on EC2 server, with inputs being sent to the server and video/audio being sent back to the device. It’ll be interesting to see how well the feature actually works, but methinks I’ll have to dig through my box of Android gadgets for a bit before I find something that plays actually plays nice with it.
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| Larry Page Spotted Wearing Google Glasses In England! Posted: 22 May 2012 06:08 AM PDT  There hasn’t been a whole lot of news coming out of the Google Zeitgeist event taking place in a posh hotel on the outskirts of London this week, but Google’s making some other news in England: its CEO Larry Page has been spotted wearing Google Glasses. The pictures of Page wearing the super-funky augmented reality eyewear are possibly the first — although his Google co-founder Sergey Brin has also been seen wearing them in the wild. Today’s pictures come courtesy of a Google employee, who posted them — where else? — on Google +. “My life is now complete – met Larry Page today! Thank you for visiting EMEA,” he wrote alongside his pictures. Nice to Google Glass has been one of the most talked-about new projects at Google for a long time. It’s one of the company’s first big forays into cutting-edge hardware. Other products it’s been reported to be working on are integrating more Google TV functions into set-top boxes and a home-entertainment system. With the company closing the acquisition of Motorola today, we are likely to get more visibility on what Google’s plans will be for developing more hardware. That, of course, is a strength at Motorola. Hardware is also something that Page himself highlighted recently in his CEO’s letter.
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| Sonos Launches The Sonos Sub (Woofer, Not Sandwich) Posted: 22 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Sonos has just gone really deep (get it?) with their new Sonos Sub, a wireless subwoofer that connects to any Sonos system and adds just a bit more oomph to the musical proceedings. The sub costs $699 and offers (according to the press release) “thick layers of bottomless sound that let you hear and feel the weight of every chord, kick, splash and roll.” The woofer connects with the AMP, ZonePlayer 120, ZonePlayer 100, the PLAY:5, and PLAY:3. It doesn’t work with the CONNECT/ZP90/ZP80. The Sub will launch on June 19.
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| ooVoo Rolls Out Video Chat Apps For iPad And Facebook Posted: 22 May 2012 06:00 AM PDT  Consumer video chat provider ooVoo, which has more than 46 million users worldwide, is rolling out new applications that will make its service even more attractive. And the service, which is popular among kids and young adults, will remain free on all those platforms, with monetization provided primarily through advertising served up to web users. ooVoo allows customers to create chat rooms with up to 12 participants which can be accessed through a number of different platforms and devices. The new iPad and Facebook apps come on top of apps for the iPhone, Android, Web, and PC applications that consumers can use to chat with their friends. Although up to 12 participants can join ooVoo chats, the new iPad app, available today, provides up to four simultaneous HD video chat streams to users. And with the Facebook app, the already social app will make it easier for users to find friends and to connect via video chat. In addition to sharing video chats on Facebook, ooVoo users can send invitations via email or by texting an ooVoo call link. In an ooVoo video chat through the company’s new iPad app, CEO Yuval Baharav told me that its young user base frequently uses the app for ambient communications, basically leaving their video chat windows open for hours. The average users watches about 200 minutes of video chat sessions per month. Users frequently use ooVoo as a way to remotely collaborate on music and other projects, and many record those sessions and upload them to YouTube or share them on Tumblr. As a result, ooVoo has added a free video record feature that they can use, taking the friction out of this popular usage of the app.
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| TechCrunch Disrupt NYC LIVE: Day Two! #TCDisrupt Posted: 22 May 2012 05:55 AM PDT  Welcome to Day Two, folks. If Day One wasn’t enough for you, then you’re in for a real treat. We have a special product announcement at 11:20, Design Office Hours and an incredible list of Day Two Battlefield contestants. If you’re wondering what happened yesterday, you may want to check out this, that and this! And don’t forget to follow along as we unveil a brand new batch of Startup Alley contestants. Follow the team’s coverage here. If you’re unable to attend don’t worry, you can join the conversation on Twitter by following #TCDisrupt. And here’s how the second day breaks down: Tuesday, May 22nd 9:00am – 9:10am 9:10am – 9:30am 9:30am – 9:50am 9:50am – 10:15am 10:15am – 10:40am 10:40am – 11:00am 11:00am – 11:20am 11:20am – 11:30am 11:30am – 11:55am 11:55am – 12:30pm 12:30pm – 2:00pm 2:00pm – 2:20pm 2:20pm – 2:30pm 2:30pm – 3:30pm Judges: 3:30pm – 3:45pm 3:45pm – 4:45pm Judges: 4:45pm – 5:00pm 5:00pm – 6:00pm Judges: 6:00pm – 7:30pm 6:00pm – 7:30pm 9:00pm – midnight
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